U.S. Seeks End to What It Calls Deceptive E-Mail Operation

Published: April 18, 2003

WASHINGTON, April 17—
The Federal Trade Commission asked a federal judge today to shut an Internet operation that it said used deceptive e-mail messages to draw people to pornographic Web sites.

The commission said it received nearly 50,000 complaints from people who said that they had received unsolicited e-mail messages, or spam, that contained images of nude women or redirected them to Web sites with sexually explicit material. The subject lines, with phrases like ''Wanna hear a joke'' and ''Did you hear the news,'' gave no clue to the nature of the material, the commission said.

A hearing on the matter has been scheduled for April 22, officials said.

In its complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, the agency said that Brian D. Westby of Ballwin, Mo., sent millions of e-mail messages in an attempt to lure Internet users to more than 20 Web sites with sexually explicit material.

Mr. Westby earned more than $1 million through his Web and e-mail operation, officials said. He did not respond to telephone calls to his home today.

''When consumers opened the e-mail messages, they were immediately subjected to sexually explicit solicitations,'' the commission said. ''Because of the deceptive subject lines, consumers had no reason to expect to see such material.''

The use of the deceptive subject lines, and a technique called spoofing, in which e-mail messages contain false and misleading information about the sender, are the central focus of the case, officials said.

Steven Wernikoff, a lawyer for the F.T.C. in Chicago, said the deceptive subject lines enabled the messages to evade filters aimed at blocking unwanted matter, exposing some children to sexual material.

Because Mr. Westby used the spoofing technique, officials said, those who tried to respond to the messages with complaints found that their e-mail went to still other Internet users. The operation ''unfairly portrayed these innocent bystanders as duplicitous spammers,'' the F.T.C. said, ''often resulting in their receiving hundreds of angry e-mails from those that had been spammed.''

When consumers clicked on the option to ''unsubscribe'' from the e-mail list, they received an error message, officials said.

In a separate matter, America Online filed suit this week against five marketers it accused of sending more than one billion unsolicited e-mail advertisements to its members.

The F.T.C. has said reducing the amount of unsolicited e-mail clogging consumers' e-mail accounts is now one of its most important missions. The commission plans to convene a forum at the end of the month to address the proliferation of unsolicited commercial e-mail and to explore the technical, legal and financial issues related to such mailings.